FIC: dancing shoes (a music box you couldn't fix remix), neville, G
Let's say it all together now! 3,000 words. Of Neville. Gen. I'm just as amazed as you are!
Series: Harry Potter
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Not mine. Jo's.
Notes: A remix of thunderemerald's wonderful story, Dancing Shoes. I should also offer my humble apologies to the village of Euxton. Finally, hugs and kisses to saffronlie for a wonderful betaing, as always.
Warnings: none
Summary: Neville Longbottom finds where he belongs.
On Saturday, Neville Longbottom fights dragons on a hill just south of his hometown. By noon, Gran will send one of the neighbours to fetch him back to their little house just outside the Nether Wood and from then the afternoon will be one never-ending stream of folding trousers and shirts, dusting the low corners of the floor that the brooms always miss, and repotting the mallowsweet and wormwood that sit on the kitchen windowsill. Neville is never excused from Saturday afternoon chores, not even when he rips a hole in his new trousers while folding or breaks a new pot into tiny ceramic triangles while potting. "Be careful, boy," Gran will say. "We may have spells to put things back together, but that's no reason to let them break in the first place."
Saturday afternoons are unavoidable as Neville has learned in the four years since he came to live with his Gran, but Satuday mornings are different. Some Saturdays he's called upon to fight a Hungarian Horntail who's flown too far west and is surly after such a long trip. Sometimes it's a dark wizard, threatening to destroy the town. Sometimes Neville has a wand (a willow ten inches, he decides one week and then, no, holly twelve inches the next), and sometimes he doesn't, but he is never, never afraid.
When the world is safe for another day, Neville sits under a crab apple tree halfway down the hill and watches the men in the hay fields below trooping back to the farmhouse for lunch. According to Great Aunt Enid, Dad asked Mum to marry him under this tree. Of course, Great Uncle Algie says that's poppycock and that Mum asked Dad when they were both still in school because, my word, Frank Longbottom could never string two words together when it came to Alice (or so Uncle Algie says). Gran, who almost certainly knows the truth if only because Gran almost certainly knows everything, just frowns whenever Neville asks and tells him not to bother with silly romantic notions like who asked whom and where. She always ends by glaring at Aunt Enid as if she were to blame for all the world's silly romantic notions.
By the time he gets back to Gran's house, all the dragon fighting and daydreaming have left grass stains on his knees and bottom. Gran meets him at the front door with her hands on her hips and her eyes narrowed.
"As if there weren't enough to do without you trotting home looking like you've been rolling around on a lawn all day."
"Sorry, Gran."
"Hurry and change out of those trousers. I'll put them in with the next load although you'll be lucky if these stains come out. What were you thinking, Neville?"
"Yes, Gran. Sorry, Gran," he says but then excitement bubbles up, and he gestures in the air, trying to explain. "But you should've seen! There was this giant Longhorn! And he went Grr! and tried to eat me, but I stuck some puffapod seeds up his nose, and they exploded, and he was scratching his nose so hard to get the flowers out of his nose that I had time to escape! It was great."
"Oh stop being silly, Neville," Gran snaps.
"Yes, Gran," Neville says.
---
On Sunday, Gran's friends, whom Neville has come to think of as simply "The Ladies," come over to play cards with Gran. Neville wakes up early on Sundays, so he can run down to Wigan Road for an egg and toast before Gran chases him back to the house to help clean. He sets up four chairs and the little folding table in the backyard under the hawthorn tree where it will be shady in the afternoon but not so shady that Mrs. Hodkinson's feet will get cold. He's six, and he unfolds the table legs by hand while Gran supervises the knives in the kitchen, making sure they cut all the crusts off her jam sandwiches. The table legs leave orange-red rust marks in the creases of his palms, and his fingers smell like rust for the rest of the afternoon.
At eleven, The Ladies arrive and bustle out to sit under the Hawthorn, drink tea, and play Noddy. Mrs. Dwyer dominates the conversation in her creaky armchair voice as Gran distributes blackcurrant sandwiches. Neville is never offered any sandwiches because, as Gran always says, there's not a cleaning spell known to man that can get blackcurrant jam stains out of trousers.
"Took me an hour and a half to get him out of bed this morning," Mrs. Dwyer says when they're all sitting down. "An hour and a half, as if I didn't have other things to be doing."
"That's a pair royal for me. Do write that down."
"Can't say as I know what those wizards in London must be thinking. Werewolf rights? You can bet they don't sit up all night listening to all the howling and carrying on over Culbeck way. And the nearest auror in Blackpool, my goodness."
"There's the Knave Noddy! Good show!"
While they play, Neville lies in the grass with the blades tickling his ears. Gran doesn't like it when he wanders too far on his own, so he watches the ants run in and out of their hills. There are big black ones and little reds ones, and sometimes there are ones that are black and red all at the same time, black heads and red bodies, like they got mixed up about what they were supposed to be and ended up being neither.
"Has your Neville started showing yet? Our William levitated his grandfather clear across the room last Thursday. We're all so proud."
"You chatter far too much, Helena," snaps Gran. "And it's your play."
Some Sundays, Neville thinks he'd like to be an ant. One of the books Aunt Enid gave him last Christmas talked about a sort that live down in South America and grow great gardens full of mushrooms under the ground, all day long. Neville thinks he'd like that best of all, living down where its warm, growing mushrooms and never having to worry about magic or blackcurrant jam stains or Mrs. Hodkinson's cold feet.
---
On Monday, Neville takes dancing lessons at the community centre on Laurel Avenue. It had been Aunt Enid's idea at first. "Let him go, Augusta," she had said. "The boy spends too much time around old ladies. He needs to make friends of his own age. Besides, if he is a you-know-what, it's best he learns how to act around Muggles sooner rather than later." Gran had hmm-ed and it seems like an awful waste of time-ed for a week or two before agreeing.
Mrs. Wilding, known throughout the village as The Woman from London, teaches the class every Monday. There are five other children, besides Neville - two girls and three boys. At first the girls take pity on him - awkward, out-of-place little boy from the strange house by the wood - but after one or two lessons, they give up and leave him to partner with Albert Hohner who is tall and stringy and has clammy palms.
Neville doesn't much like dancing. He can never remember the steps, and he's always tripping on his pantlegs or stepping on Albert's toes. Mrs. Wilding tries her best to be patient, but Neville knows they both think he's hopeless.
"Give it another try, Neville," Mrs. Wilding will say.
"I can't. I'm no good."
"Come on! I've heard your father is a great dancer. Give it a try."
Gran doesn't much like talking about Dad. Not Mum either, really. When Neville asks her what his Mum was like, Gran always tells him to hurry up and finish the sweeping or to change his shirt or brush his teeth. There's always something Neville ought to be doing when it comes to his Mum. But when it comes to Dad, Gran gets a look on her face that is pinched and sad, and she'll tell him that his dad was a fine man and that Neville shouldn't worry about such things. It makes Neville's chest hurt when Gran looks like that, so eventually he just stops asking.
There's a picture on the fireplace mantle of Mum and Dad dancing. Gran used to keep it in the top drawer of her bedside table, facedown, until she found Neville looking at it one day. She'd yelled at him a lot about not touching other people's things and didn't he think she deserved some privacy but later that night, Neville had come downstairs to find the picture on the mantle and Gran sitting in her rocking chair in front of the fire looking at it. Neville hadn't said anything, but he'd brought Gran her blanket and her half-finished crossword from the morning's Prophet like he does every Monday night, and they'd sat together and watched the picture until bedtime.
In the picture, Mum is wearing a blue robe that stops just above her ankles, and Dad is twirling her and twirling her, and they laugh and twirl until suddenly Dad catches her around the waist and kisses her nose. Neville can watch the picture for hours without getting bored. He tries to imagine how these happy, laughing, dancing people could be the people Gran takes him to see in the summer.
Some nights, when he's lying in bed with the sheets pulled up over his ears, he pretends that Gran's footsteps in the room across the hall are Mum's and that there's just been some huge mistake - Mum and Dad aren't in St. Mungo's; they've just been away for a while, dancing in London and Rome and Paris, and tomorrow Mum will smile at him like she knows who he is, and Dad will remember his name.
---
On Tuesday, Aunt Enid and Uncle Algie come over from Blackpool for tea. By train it takes a little over an hour, but Aunt Enid says brooms make her sick these days and Uncle Algie has views on newfangled inventions like Floo powder, so they have no other choice. Neville meets them at the station and escorts them back to Gran's house, smiling at all of Aunt Enid's exclamations about how tall he's grown and Uncle Algie's pointed questions about school - had they heard anything from Hogwarts yet? No, Uncle Algie, Neville answers, I'm only ten. We aren't expecting anything until next year.
Gran has tea waiting when they get home, and Neville, Aunt Enid, and Uncle Algie stomp the snow off their boots. Then Neville takes their coats and hangs them in the closet while his aunt and uncle join Gran in front of the fire. When Neville is done, he joins them, sitting on the floor because Gran is worried he'll spill tea on her good linen tablecloth which she saves especially for Tuesday teas.
Neville likes Aunt Enid, who looks and sounds like Gran but without all the sharp edges. When he was younger and everyone was worried he'd turn out to be a squib, Aunt Enid used to tell him stories about a Muggle sailor she'd had a fling with during one of the Muggle wars or a squib friend who now owned a flower shop in Beijing of all places. Around Aunt Enid, Neville has always felt that being himself is all she ever wants from him, that for once he is good enough.
Uncle Algie, on the other hand, frightens Neville nearly as much as Gran and not just because of the Dock Incident or the Window Event. Uncle Algie has been nearly everywhere a person can go and done nearly everything a person can do, and if Neville thinks he's good enough for his aunt then he knows that he will never, ever be good enough for his uncle.
When tea is over, Gran and Aunt Enid discuss the latest additions to the Longbottom clan while Neville and Uncle Algie play chess. Neville always loses because he can never quite figure out which way to move the knights so about twenty minutes in, his pieces get fed up and stalk off the board.
"C'mon, Neville! Don't let them push you around like that! You're in charge here, not them."
"Y- Yes, Uncle Algie."
"Don't waste your energy, Algie. The boy wouldn't be able to keep his feet in line if they weren't attached to his legs. And even then!"
"Oh, don't be cruel, Augusta," chides Aunt Enid. "I've never been much good at chess either, Neville, and nor was your father."
"It's true," Uncle Algie adds. "I used to beat him twice a week when he was a boy, and he didn't improve much as he got older. Your mother, though. Merlin, now there was a woman who knew her chess."
In the end, Neville can live through all the defeats and cheek pinchings and awkward questions for the half hour every Tuesday when Aunt Enid and Uncle Algie will tell him about his parent.
---
On Wednesday, when Neville is home from Hogwarts for summer hols, he and Gran travel to St. Mungo's to visit Mum and Dad. He was seven the first time Gran agreed to take him, seven when his parents finally became more than people in Gran's photo album. The Healer who'd shown them up to the wing had warned him not to expect too much, that they probably wouldn't even recognize him but when Neville saw them for the first time and realized that they didn't remember having a son, let alone that he was it, he started to cry. And then Mum started to cry.
Now, five years later, he's become used to it. He doesn't like it, by any stretch of the imagination, but he understands that his parents are never really going to know who he is, just like he's never really going to know who they were. Fate and chance, bad luck and evil people intervened and placed this unbridgeable gap between the time when Neville's parents stopped being thinking, feeling, conscious people and when Neville began.
Mum is not what the Trainee Healers call "a talker." No matter how many times he comes or what he tries, Neville can never get Mum to speak. He wouldn't even know what her voice sounded like - high or deep, clear or rough - except she hums almost constantly and sometimes, if he listens closely and stays very still, he can catch her singing almost inaudibly to herself.
Dad's the exact opposite. He talks constantly, although a lot of the time its in made-up words or just noises he thinks sound nice. Sometimes, he says a word and, it seems to Neville, likes it so much that he'll just keep saying it over and over.
Most of the time, they visit together, Neville and Gran, but occasionally there's paperwork to be filled out or the Healer in charge of Mum and Dad needs to speak to Gran privately, and then Neville will be left alone with his parents. Without Gran around to watch him and cluck her tongue at any "silly sentimentality," Neville will talk to his parents, tell them about his classes and about his friends. Some visits, the Healers will let him brush his Mum's hair, although she doesn't really have much left. Other times, there'll be a nice, safe board game or decks of cards to play with except Dad usually tries to rip the cards or throw the playing pieces around the room, so that never lasts long.
One time, one of the Muggle-born Healers taught Neville to fold little birds out of pieces of paper. She said they were supposed to help people get well, so he'd folded cranes until Gran came back to take him home. The next Wednesday, Mum still had one of the little cranes. She'd kept it in her pocket and other than a bent wing and a slightly flattened head, it was still whole. She'd handed it to Neville, looking very serious, and from his bed, Dad had said, "Hold it in both hands. If you drop it, it will break."
---
On Thursday, Neville puts on his new dress robes and looks into the mirror. He bows, and nothing tears or gets caught. He mimes putting his left hand on a girl's waist and holding her own hand in his right and tries the first few steps of a waltz. Not only does he avoid stumbling, but he also remembers the steps that Mrs. Wilding taught him so long ago - even the ones he didn't think he knew. He does a turn, a half step to the left, moves his right foot behind his left foot and sweeps the left out to the side, and stops dead when he catches his reflection in the mirror.
The shoes are Dad's or so Gran said when she brought the box down from the attic. The robes, which Gran had picked out that afternoon, are the same shade of blue as Mum's are in the picture on the mantel. When he put the robes on and showed them to Gran, her hand had, just for a moment, gone to her mouth, and she'd blinked quickly four times. "You look just like your father," she'd said and then, "That'll do."
But looking in the mirror now, Neville doesn't think he looks like his father at all, and he wonders how he grew up, grew into himself, without even noticing it.
---
On Friday, Neville finds Harry sitting on the front porch, motionless and hunched over so his chin rests between his knees. Neville doesn't ask, "Harry, what's wrong? Why are you here? " although he'd like to. The letters he's received from Hermione since the war ended have explained in some detail that Harry feels out of place, restless, like he's got two left feet and the world suddenly expects him to foxtrot when he only ever learned to waltz. Of course, the exact words Hermione used were "having trouble adjusting," but Neville has spent years feeling out of place, and he thinks his description is probably closer to the truth.
Eventually Harry looks up, twists around, and spots Neville in the doorway. He smiles crookedly and says, "This town is really nice."
Neville nods and says, "I'll make us lunch and show you around later, if you'd like."
They eat sandwiches on the front porch and then Neville takes Harry on the tour of the village, pointing out all the landmarks of his childhood which have changed slightly in the years since Neville first went to Hogwarts. He points out the old hospital, covered in ivy and crumbling at the edges, and the library which doubles as town hall half the time.
They stop for a while just outside the churchyard where Gran is buried. A proper Christian burial, Neville thinks whenever he passes by, and it never fails to make him smile because he thinks that Gran, for all her eye-rolling over Muggle religion, is more at home in the neat rows and clipped grass of the churchyard than she would be in the woods, buried according to the old ways.
Before Neville really realises it, they're heading up the dirt road near the river and out toward his hill. Some rich city man came and bought the hill some time in the years before Gran died and Neville returned to the village, and now there is a summer house perched on one side and a fence all around the property. Harry and Neville walk as close as they can and lean on the fence, looking at the old crab apple tree from afar instead of sitting underneath it like they would've when Neville was younger.
"I used to play all over this hill when I was a kid," Neville tells Harry. "I used to pretend I was a great wizard, and I'd fight dark wizards to protect the village. It seems stupid now."
"I used to pretend I was a fireman," says Harry and then he blinks and makes a gesture with his hand. "Muggles call them when they need to put out a- "
Neville smiles. "I know what a fireman is."
"Ah," Harry says and relaxes again. "Right. Sorry. I'm just used to having to explain everything to Ron."
They stand in silence for a little while. Down in the fields below, the men are loading hay onto the trailer of a bright blue tractor. Across the road at the base of the hill, a father and his two sons are flying home-made kites, and Neville thinks about the time Uncle Algie tried to teach him how to fly a kite and how the wind had tugged and tugged until it tugged the kite right out of Neville hands and then up and off and out of sight.
"You know," Neville says on a whim born from graves and kites and blackcurrant sandwiches, "my Great Aunt Enid used to say that my Mum and Dad got engaged here. Of course, my Great Uncle Algie always disagreed, and they'd fight for hours about it whenever they came to visit. Gran used to say it didn't matter."
"What do you think?" asks Harry.
Neville shrugs. "I agree with Gran, I guess. It doesn't matter."
"Hm," says Harry, leaning forward on the fence until it creaks. He threads his fingers together in front of him and stretches his palms out towards the tree until his shoulders make a little pop noise.
"I think," Neville says hesitantly, "I think I'd like to imagine that they got engaged here. That they'd have lived here when I was a kid. That I'd still be me even if things had worked out better. I think that's important."
"Hm," says Harry again and then, finally, "Yeah."
---
I think I have more to say about this fic. Possibly enough to warrant one of those DVD commentary things. And I certainly have feedback to start answering (you guys are too nice to me! really!).
But for now, I'm too sleepy to do anything but thank kindkit again for the incredibly, brilliantly good remix she did of Only a Paper Moon. It was better than I could possibly imagine, and you should all read it and leave feedback.
Series: Harry Potter
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Not mine. Jo's.
Notes: A remix of thunderemerald's wonderful story, Dancing Shoes. I should also offer my humble apologies to the village of Euxton. Finally, hugs and kisses to saffronlie for a wonderful betaing, as always.
Warnings: none
Summary: Neville Longbottom finds where he belongs.
On Saturday, Neville Longbottom fights dragons on a hill just south of his hometown. By noon, Gran will send one of the neighbours to fetch him back to their little house just outside the Nether Wood and from then the afternoon will be one never-ending stream of folding trousers and shirts, dusting the low corners of the floor that the brooms always miss, and repotting the mallowsweet and wormwood that sit on the kitchen windowsill. Neville is never excused from Saturday afternoon chores, not even when he rips a hole in his new trousers while folding or breaks a new pot into tiny ceramic triangles while potting. "Be careful, boy," Gran will say. "We may have spells to put things back together, but that's no reason to let them break in the first place."
Saturday afternoons are unavoidable as Neville has learned in the four years since he came to live with his Gran, but Satuday mornings are different. Some Saturdays he's called upon to fight a Hungarian Horntail who's flown too far west and is surly after such a long trip. Sometimes it's a dark wizard, threatening to destroy the town. Sometimes Neville has a wand (a willow ten inches, he decides one week and then, no, holly twelve inches the next), and sometimes he doesn't, but he is never, never afraid.
When the world is safe for another day, Neville sits under a crab apple tree halfway down the hill and watches the men in the hay fields below trooping back to the farmhouse for lunch. According to Great Aunt Enid, Dad asked Mum to marry him under this tree. Of course, Great Uncle Algie says that's poppycock and that Mum asked Dad when they were both still in school because, my word, Frank Longbottom could never string two words together when it came to Alice (or so Uncle Algie says). Gran, who almost certainly knows the truth if only because Gran almost certainly knows everything, just frowns whenever Neville asks and tells him not to bother with silly romantic notions like who asked whom and where. She always ends by glaring at Aunt Enid as if she were to blame for all the world's silly romantic notions.
By the time he gets back to Gran's house, all the dragon fighting and daydreaming have left grass stains on his knees and bottom. Gran meets him at the front door with her hands on her hips and her eyes narrowed.
"As if there weren't enough to do without you trotting home looking like you've been rolling around on a lawn all day."
"Sorry, Gran."
"Hurry and change out of those trousers. I'll put them in with the next load although you'll be lucky if these stains come out. What were you thinking, Neville?"
"Yes, Gran. Sorry, Gran," he says but then excitement bubbles up, and he gestures in the air, trying to explain. "But you should've seen! There was this giant Longhorn! And he went Grr! and tried to eat me, but I stuck some puffapod seeds up his nose, and they exploded, and he was scratching his nose so hard to get the flowers out of his nose that I had time to escape! It was great."
"Oh stop being silly, Neville," Gran snaps.
"Yes, Gran," Neville says.
---
On Sunday, Gran's friends, whom Neville has come to think of as simply "The Ladies," come over to play cards with Gran. Neville wakes up early on Sundays, so he can run down to Wigan Road for an egg and toast before Gran chases him back to the house to help clean. He sets up four chairs and the little folding table in the backyard under the hawthorn tree where it will be shady in the afternoon but not so shady that Mrs. Hodkinson's feet will get cold. He's six, and he unfolds the table legs by hand while Gran supervises the knives in the kitchen, making sure they cut all the crusts off her jam sandwiches. The table legs leave orange-red rust marks in the creases of his palms, and his fingers smell like rust for the rest of the afternoon.
At eleven, The Ladies arrive and bustle out to sit under the Hawthorn, drink tea, and play Noddy. Mrs. Dwyer dominates the conversation in her creaky armchair voice as Gran distributes blackcurrant sandwiches. Neville is never offered any sandwiches because, as Gran always says, there's not a cleaning spell known to man that can get blackcurrant jam stains out of trousers.
"Took me an hour and a half to get him out of bed this morning," Mrs. Dwyer says when they're all sitting down. "An hour and a half, as if I didn't have other things to be doing."
"That's a pair royal for me. Do write that down."
"Can't say as I know what those wizards in London must be thinking. Werewolf rights? You can bet they don't sit up all night listening to all the howling and carrying on over Culbeck way. And the nearest auror in Blackpool, my goodness."
"There's the Knave Noddy! Good show!"
While they play, Neville lies in the grass with the blades tickling his ears. Gran doesn't like it when he wanders too far on his own, so he watches the ants run in and out of their hills. There are big black ones and little reds ones, and sometimes there are ones that are black and red all at the same time, black heads and red bodies, like they got mixed up about what they were supposed to be and ended up being neither.
"Has your Neville started showing yet? Our William levitated his grandfather clear across the room last Thursday. We're all so proud."
"You chatter far too much, Helena," snaps Gran. "And it's your play."
Some Sundays, Neville thinks he'd like to be an ant. One of the books Aunt Enid gave him last Christmas talked about a sort that live down in South America and grow great gardens full of mushrooms under the ground, all day long. Neville thinks he'd like that best of all, living down where its warm, growing mushrooms and never having to worry about magic or blackcurrant jam stains or Mrs. Hodkinson's cold feet.
---
On Monday, Neville takes dancing lessons at the community centre on Laurel Avenue. It had been Aunt Enid's idea at first. "Let him go, Augusta," she had said. "The boy spends too much time around old ladies. He needs to make friends of his own age. Besides, if he is a you-know-what, it's best he learns how to act around Muggles sooner rather than later." Gran had hmm-ed and it seems like an awful waste of time-ed for a week or two before agreeing.
Mrs. Wilding, known throughout the village as The Woman from London, teaches the class every Monday. There are five other children, besides Neville - two girls and three boys. At first the girls take pity on him - awkward, out-of-place little boy from the strange house by the wood - but after one or two lessons, they give up and leave him to partner with Albert Hohner who is tall and stringy and has clammy palms.
Neville doesn't much like dancing. He can never remember the steps, and he's always tripping on his pantlegs or stepping on Albert's toes. Mrs. Wilding tries her best to be patient, but Neville knows they both think he's hopeless.
"Give it another try, Neville," Mrs. Wilding will say.
"I can't. I'm no good."
"Come on! I've heard your father is a great dancer. Give it a try."
Gran doesn't much like talking about Dad. Not Mum either, really. When Neville asks her what his Mum was like, Gran always tells him to hurry up and finish the sweeping or to change his shirt or brush his teeth. There's always something Neville ought to be doing when it comes to his Mum. But when it comes to Dad, Gran gets a look on her face that is pinched and sad, and she'll tell him that his dad was a fine man and that Neville shouldn't worry about such things. It makes Neville's chest hurt when Gran looks like that, so eventually he just stops asking.
There's a picture on the fireplace mantle of Mum and Dad dancing. Gran used to keep it in the top drawer of her bedside table, facedown, until she found Neville looking at it one day. She'd yelled at him a lot about not touching other people's things and didn't he think she deserved some privacy but later that night, Neville had come downstairs to find the picture on the mantle and Gran sitting in her rocking chair in front of the fire looking at it. Neville hadn't said anything, but he'd brought Gran her blanket and her half-finished crossword from the morning's Prophet like he does every Monday night, and they'd sat together and watched the picture until bedtime.
In the picture, Mum is wearing a blue robe that stops just above her ankles, and Dad is twirling her and twirling her, and they laugh and twirl until suddenly Dad catches her around the waist and kisses her nose. Neville can watch the picture for hours without getting bored. He tries to imagine how these happy, laughing, dancing people could be the people Gran takes him to see in the summer.
Some nights, when he's lying in bed with the sheets pulled up over his ears, he pretends that Gran's footsteps in the room across the hall are Mum's and that there's just been some huge mistake - Mum and Dad aren't in St. Mungo's; they've just been away for a while, dancing in London and Rome and Paris, and tomorrow Mum will smile at him like she knows who he is, and Dad will remember his name.
---
On Tuesday, Aunt Enid and Uncle Algie come over from Blackpool for tea. By train it takes a little over an hour, but Aunt Enid says brooms make her sick these days and Uncle Algie has views on newfangled inventions like Floo powder, so they have no other choice. Neville meets them at the station and escorts them back to Gran's house, smiling at all of Aunt Enid's exclamations about how tall he's grown and Uncle Algie's pointed questions about school - had they heard anything from Hogwarts yet? No, Uncle Algie, Neville answers, I'm only ten. We aren't expecting anything until next year.
Gran has tea waiting when they get home, and Neville, Aunt Enid, and Uncle Algie stomp the snow off their boots. Then Neville takes their coats and hangs them in the closet while his aunt and uncle join Gran in front of the fire. When Neville is done, he joins them, sitting on the floor because Gran is worried he'll spill tea on her good linen tablecloth which she saves especially for Tuesday teas.
Neville likes Aunt Enid, who looks and sounds like Gran but without all the sharp edges. When he was younger and everyone was worried he'd turn out to be a squib, Aunt Enid used to tell him stories about a Muggle sailor she'd had a fling with during one of the Muggle wars or a squib friend who now owned a flower shop in Beijing of all places. Around Aunt Enid, Neville has always felt that being himself is all she ever wants from him, that for once he is good enough.
Uncle Algie, on the other hand, frightens Neville nearly as much as Gran and not just because of the Dock Incident or the Window Event. Uncle Algie has been nearly everywhere a person can go and done nearly everything a person can do, and if Neville thinks he's good enough for his aunt then he knows that he will never, ever be good enough for his uncle.
When tea is over, Gran and Aunt Enid discuss the latest additions to the Longbottom clan while Neville and Uncle Algie play chess. Neville always loses because he can never quite figure out which way to move the knights so about twenty minutes in, his pieces get fed up and stalk off the board.
"C'mon, Neville! Don't let them push you around like that! You're in charge here, not them."
"Y- Yes, Uncle Algie."
"Don't waste your energy, Algie. The boy wouldn't be able to keep his feet in line if they weren't attached to his legs. And even then!"
"Oh, don't be cruel, Augusta," chides Aunt Enid. "I've never been much good at chess either, Neville, and nor was your father."
"It's true," Uncle Algie adds. "I used to beat him twice a week when he was a boy, and he didn't improve much as he got older. Your mother, though. Merlin, now there was a woman who knew her chess."
In the end, Neville can live through all the defeats and cheek pinchings and awkward questions for the half hour every Tuesday when Aunt Enid and Uncle Algie will tell him about his parent.
---
On Wednesday, when Neville is home from Hogwarts for summer hols, he and Gran travel to St. Mungo's to visit Mum and Dad. He was seven the first time Gran agreed to take him, seven when his parents finally became more than people in Gran's photo album. The Healer who'd shown them up to the wing had warned him not to expect too much, that they probably wouldn't even recognize him but when Neville saw them for the first time and realized that they didn't remember having a son, let alone that he was it, he started to cry. And then Mum started to cry.
Now, five years later, he's become used to it. He doesn't like it, by any stretch of the imagination, but he understands that his parents are never really going to know who he is, just like he's never really going to know who they were. Fate and chance, bad luck and evil people intervened and placed this unbridgeable gap between the time when Neville's parents stopped being thinking, feeling, conscious people and when Neville began.
Mum is not what the Trainee Healers call "a talker." No matter how many times he comes or what he tries, Neville can never get Mum to speak. He wouldn't even know what her voice sounded like - high or deep, clear or rough - except she hums almost constantly and sometimes, if he listens closely and stays very still, he can catch her singing almost inaudibly to herself.
Dad's the exact opposite. He talks constantly, although a lot of the time its in made-up words or just noises he thinks sound nice. Sometimes, he says a word and, it seems to Neville, likes it so much that he'll just keep saying it over and over.
Most of the time, they visit together, Neville and Gran, but occasionally there's paperwork to be filled out or the Healer in charge of Mum and Dad needs to speak to Gran privately, and then Neville will be left alone with his parents. Without Gran around to watch him and cluck her tongue at any "silly sentimentality," Neville will talk to his parents, tell them about his classes and about his friends. Some visits, the Healers will let him brush his Mum's hair, although she doesn't really have much left. Other times, there'll be a nice, safe board game or decks of cards to play with except Dad usually tries to rip the cards or throw the playing pieces around the room, so that never lasts long.
One time, one of the Muggle-born Healers taught Neville to fold little birds out of pieces of paper. She said they were supposed to help people get well, so he'd folded cranes until Gran came back to take him home. The next Wednesday, Mum still had one of the little cranes. She'd kept it in her pocket and other than a bent wing and a slightly flattened head, it was still whole. She'd handed it to Neville, looking very serious, and from his bed, Dad had said, "Hold it in both hands. If you drop it, it will break."
---
On Thursday, Neville puts on his new dress robes and looks into the mirror. He bows, and nothing tears or gets caught. He mimes putting his left hand on a girl's waist and holding her own hand in his right and tries the first few steps of a waltz. Not only does he avoid stumbling, but he also remembers the steps that Mrs. Wilding taught him so long ago - even the ones he didn't think he knew. He does a turn, a half step to the left, moves his right foot behind his left foot and sweeps the left out to the side, and stops dead when he catches his reflection in the mirror.
The shoes are Dad's or so Gran said when she brought the box down from the attic. The robes, which Gran had picked out that afternoon, are the same shade of blue as Mum's are in the picture on the mantel. When he put the robes on and showed them to Gran, her hand had, just for a moment, gone to her mouth, and she'd blinked quickly four times. "You look just like your father," she'd said and then, "That'll do."
But looking in the mirror now, Neville doesn't think he looks like his father at all, and he wonders how he grew up, grew into himself, without even noticing it.
---
On Friday, Neville finds Harry sitting on the front porch, motionless and hunched over so his chin rests between his knees. Neville doesn't ask, "Harry, what's wrong? Why are you here? " although he'd like to. The letters he's received from Hermione since the war ended have explained in some detail that Harry feels out of place, restless, like he's got two left feet and the world suddenly expects him to foxtrot when he only ever learned to waltz. Of course, the exact words Hermione used were "having trouble adjusting," but Neville has spent years feeling out of place, and he thinks his description is probably closer to the truth.
Eventually Harry looks up, twists around, and spots Neville in the doorway. He smiles crookedly and says, "This town is really nice."
Neville nods and says, "I'll make us lunch and show you around later, if you'd like."
They eat sandwiches on the front porch and then Neville takes Harry on the tour of the village, pointing out all the landmarks of his childhood which have changed slightly in the years since Neville first went to Hogwarts. He points out the old hospital, covered in ivy and crumbling at the edges, and the library which doubles as town hall half the time.
They stop for a while just outside the churchyard where Gran is buried. A proper Christian burial, Neville thinks whenever he passes by, and it never fails to make him smile because he thinks that Gran, for all her eye-rolling over Muggle religion, is more at home in the neat rows and clipped grass of the churchyard than she would be in the woods, buried according to the old ways.
Before Neville really realises it, they're heading up the dirt road near the river and out toward his hill. Some rich city man came and bought the hill some time in the years before Gran died and Neville returned to the village, and now there is a summer house perched on one side and a fence all around the property. Harry and Neville walk as close as they can and lean on the fence, looking at the old crab apple tree from afar instead of sitting underneath it like they would've when Neville was younger.
"I used to play all over this hill when I was a kid," Neville tells Harry. "I used to pretend I was a great wizard, and I'd fight dark wizards to protect the village. It seems stupid now."
"I used to pretend I was a fireman," says Harry and then he blinks and makes a gesture with his hand. "Muggles call them when they need to put out a- "
Neville smiles. "I know what a fireman is."
"Ah," Harry says and relaxes again. "Right. Sorry. I'm just used to having to explain everything to Ron."
They stand in silence for a little while. Down in the fields below, the men are loading hay onto the trailer of a bright blue tractor. Across the road at the base of the hill, a father and his two sons are flying home-made kites, and Neville thinks about the time Uncle Algie tried to teach him how to fly a kite and how the wind had tugged and tugged until it tugged the kite right out of Neville hands and then up and off and out of sight.
"You know," Neville says on a whim born from graves and kites and blackcurrant sandwiches, "my Great Aunt Enid used to say that my Mum and Dad got engaged here. Of course, my Great Uncle Algie always disagreed, and they'd fight for hours about it whenever they came to visit. Gran used to say it didn't matter."
"What do you think?" asks Harry.
Neville shrugs. "I agree with Gran, I guess. It doesn't matter."
"Hm," says Harry, leaning forward on the fence until it creaks. He threads his fingers together in front of him and stretches his palms out towards the tree until his shoulders make a little pop noise.
"I think," Neville says hesitantly, "I think I'd like to imagine that they got engaged here. That they'd have lived here when I was a kid. That I'd still be me even if things had worked out better. I think that's important."
"Hm," says Harry again and then, finally, "Yeah."
---
I think I have more to say about this fic. Possibly enough to warrant one of those DVD commentary things. And I certainly have feedback to start answering (you guys are too nice to me! really!).
But for now, I'm too sleepy to do anything but thank kindkit again for the incredibly, brilliantly good remix she did of Only a Paper Moon. It was better than I could possibly imagine, and you should all read it and leave feedback.